Quincy Nell was home alone when he came. He came backing the Toyota up across the yard to the door of the storm cellar. He got out. She was standing on the porch with her arms crossed over her stomach watching him across the porch railing.
Hey babe, he said. I come after my air conditioner. That trailer’s like trying to sleep in a microwave oven.
You don’t have an air conditioner.
Oh come on don’t give me that. I paid good money for it and you seen me do it.
You got every nickel of that money back. By now I guess you’ve spent it on that Seiber woman.
No I never.
Then buy you an air conditioner.
I bought something a whole lot cheaper but just as good, he said.
He was opening the toolbox on the truck. He took out a wrecking bar almost three feet long. It was new-looking and a price tag still dangled from a string tied to it. He started toward the door of the storm cellar. She was already off the porch coming around the corner of the house. The only weapon she’d come across was a garden rake and she was carrying that. Get off my property, she was yelling.
I’m taking it.
Then you’ll take it to a jail cell if you break that lock. Daddy’s by a telephone right now and he can have the law here in fifteen minutes. Everybody knows it s mine anyway.
Come on, Quincy Nell.
No. It goes in our apartment.
Quincy Nell, there ain’t any apartment. I live in a house trailer, remember. Get it through your head. And I believe I’ll go to the law myself. I’ll get a paper says that air conditioner’s mine and I’ll have a deputy sheriff to help me unload it, too.
Then go on and do it, she said.
After he left she unlocked the door. She knelt in the door looking at the air conditioner. She could feel her swelling stomach pressing against her thighs. The thing sat on stacked bricks. It was no longer an air conditioner, and hadn’t been for some time. It was pale lime-green walls and yellow chintz curtains, a baby in a highchair saying Daddy for the first time and her telling Bonedaddy about it the minute he came through the door. She began to cry, for all that was lost, for all that had never been.
THE JADE-GREEN station wagon stopped in the driveway and a man got out and opened the rear door. He was a tall thin man in baggy twill pants and a T-shirt and he had thin black hair combed to cover a bald spot. He was grinning at her. He looked vaguely familiar and by the time he was halfway to the doorstep she had recognized him.
How stupid do they think I am? she asked herself.
He was at the foot of the doorstep. He took out a bright red bandanna and mopped his face with it.
You the little lady got the air conditioner I heard about on the radio? Sure is fine weather for one.
Yeah. I called it in on Tradetime. It’s a hundred and twentyfive dollars.
Well, that’s fine, that’s fine, the man said. He appeared nervous.
Say don’t I know you? Aren’t you Bonedaddy Bowers s brother that lives over at Coble?
Well, yeah, that’s me all right. But I wanted the air conditioner for me, not him.
Whoever it’s for it’s a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
Well what I was thinking see I don’t even know if it works. I was planning on taking it and making sure everything was all right then bringing you back the money. I know your daddy.
She was shaking her head. I’m sorry, she said. It don’t leave here till the money’s in my hand. If it don’t work you can bring it back. It’s guaranteed.
He stood twisting the handkerchief in his hands.
You can tell Bonedaddy I wasn’t born yesterday, she said. I didn’t just fall off some hay truck that was passing through town.
Yes ma’am, Bonedaddy’s brother said.
IT WAS THREE DAYS later when Clarence called. Clarence lived a quarter mile or so below Quincy Nell in a doublewide house trailer with his momma.
I got it sold, he said.
What?
I been hearing you every day on Tradetime. There’s a friend of mine down here, Cecil, he’s got the money in his pocket and he wants that air conditioner.
Send him up here then.
I can’t. Cecil won’t come. Bonedaddy whipped him a week or two ago over something and he’s afraid Bonedaddy’ll catch him hauling off that air conditioner.
This is the last place he’s likely to see Bonedaddy. He’s more likely to be at your house than mine.
He’s pissed at me. He got mad at me cause I said he was running over you.
I can’t load it by myself anyway, she said.
That’s no problem. I’ll run up there and help you.
When they had loaded the air conditioner into the Gremlin the shed looked curiously empty. She left the door standing ajar and it held only shadows.
Clarence laid a hand on her arm. Me and you ought to get together one of these nights, he said.
No. Me and Bonedaddy’ll probably get back together.
I don’t think so. You want to know what he said?
No, she said. She leaned against the side of the Gremlin and wiped the sweat out of her eyes with a sleeve. All right. What did he say?
He said you was a free agent. He said he reckoned you was anybody’s dog wanted to go hunting.
No he never.
He damn sure did.
He’s a liar then.
The driveway curved downhill and she followed Clarence’s truck. Where the driveway came out onto the county road there was an old abandoned farmhouse set in the corner with a yardful of pecan trees and here Clarence stopped in the middle of the road. She braked and sat in momentary confusion. Clarence’s truck must have died. She could hear a flat popping sound.
She turned to look. The yard was grown up knee-high with grass and there were old cast-off car parts and machinery jutting out of it. Bonedaddy was standing under one of the pecan trees looking up. He was wearing frayed denim cutoffs and no shirt and his hair was tied back in a ponytail and he was burned dark by the sun. He had a little chrome-plated pistol and he was shooting pecans off the tree branches with it.
Quincy Nell had a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She thought she might throw up, or perhaps faint. She got out of the car without cutting the switch. Clarence had gotten out of his truck too and stood there grinning sheepishly into the sun. He looked ashamed, but not much.
Hey baby, Bonedaddy said. What you got in there? Why, I do believe it’s that new air conditioner I ordered.
He came across the grassy yard grinning at her. His teeth were white against the dark flesh of his face. He had swung out the cylinder of the revolver and he was feeding copper-colored cartridges into it as he came. He was wearing sunglasses, the mirrored kind that turned the world back at you and she could see herself twinned in them.
Clarence told me what you said about me.
What I said? Who knows what that might be. Clarence is a terrible liar. Ain’t you Clarence?
I lie all the time, Clarence agreed.
I hope you kill somebody with that thing and they send you to the penitentiary, Quincy Nell said. I hope they send you to the electric chair.
Boy the cold wind’ll blow on me tonight, he said. I feel a cold front approaching already.
Don’t even think about taking that air conditioner.
Clarence, help me load it.
Clarence was looking at Quincy Nell. No, he said almost inaudibly.
Do what?
I ain’t touchin it, Clarence said.
Bonedaddy studied him for a moment. He laid the pistol on the tailgate of Clarences truck. Suit yourself then. I’ll load it my damn self.
He strode to the rear of the Gremlin. He fastened a hand to either side and gave a mighty heave and the air conditioner came free and he turned tottering under its unexpected weight and grinning foolishly. When he came around in the road Quincy Nell was standing against the tailgate of Clarence’s truck pointing the little chrome-plated pistol at him. She was standing feet apart
and arms extended straight out holding the pistol both-handed and staring down its barrel.
Put it back in my car, she said.
He stood with his jaw dropped and the thing clasped in front of him like some curious and inadequate offering he was making. You stupid cunt, he finally said.
Quincy Nell could see herself in the sunglasses. She could feel the hard hot edge of the tailgate against the flesh of her upper thighs.
Clarence had started to run. He ran silent and intent, like a quarterback who sees an opening and takes it, across the grassgrown yard and into the sedge leaping a cast-off turning plow and disappearing into a thin spinney of cypress. The first shot whanged off the steel case of the air conditioner and shattered the point of Bonedaddy’s collarbone. It exploded in a fine pink mist and he dropped the air conditioner on his feet. The corner of the case struck his shin just below the knee and cut a long curving welt in his leg. He looked as if he was struggling to pick up the air conditioner. She shot him just below the left nipple and a tiny blue hole appeared, another, another, little pocks in the dark flesh where blood slowly welled black and viscous as tar and tracked down his rib cage. He sat in the road hugging the air conditioner. She lowered the gun. She stepped toward him and sat in the dusty road. His eyes were closed. She clasped the pistol loosely in her right hand and with her left forefinger traced the pale line of scar tissue down his cheek.
Up the road at the doublewide Clarence’s mother came out to see what in the world was going on. She shaded her eyes with a hand and peered down the road. Then she went back in and the door slapped hard behind her.
Quincy Nell sat in the dust, her legs folded under her. The back of her right hand lay in the roadbed, the little pistol resting on her palm. She could hear the Gremlin idling. She guessed she’d just have to sit here until someone came along who knew what to do about all this.
The Paperhanger
THE VANISHING of the doctors wife’s child in broad daylight was an event so cataclysmic that it forever divided time into the then and the now, the before and the after. In later years, fortified with a pitcher of silica-dry vodka martinis, she had cause to replay the events preceding the disappearance. They were tawdry and banal but in retrospect freighted with menace, a foreshadowing of what was to come, like a footman or a fool preceding a king into a room.
She had been quarreling with the paperhanger. Her four-year-old daughter, Zeineb, was standing directly behind the paperhanger where he knelt smoothing air bubbles out with a wide plastic trowel. Zeineb had her fingers in the paperhanger’s hair. The paperhanger’s hair was shoulder length and the color of flax and the child was delighted with it. The paperhanger was accustomed to her doing this and he did not even turn around. He just went on with his work. His arms were smooth and brown and corded with muscle and in the light that fell upon the paperhanger through stained-glass panels the doctor’s wife could see that they were lightly downed with fine golden hair. She studied these arms bemusedly while she formulated her thoughts.
You tell me so much a roll, she said. The doctor’s wife was from Pakistan and her speech was still heavily accented. I do not know single-bolt rolls and double-bolt rolls. You tell me double-bolt price but you are installing single-bolt rolls. My friend has told me. It is cost me perhaps twice as much.
The paperhanger, still on his knees, turned. He smiled up at her. He had pale blue eyes. I did tell you so much a roll, he said. You bought the rolls.
The child, not yet vanished, was watching the paperhanger’s eyes. She was a scaled-down clone of the mother, the mother viewed through the wrong end of a telescope, and the paperhanger suspected that as she grew neither her features nor her expression would alter, she would just grow larger, like something being aired up with a hand pump.
And you are leave lumps, the doctor s wife said, gesturing at the wall.
I do not leave lumps, the paperhanger said. You’ve seen my work before. These are not lumps. The paper is wet. The paste is wet. Everything will shrink down and flatten out. He smiled again. He had clean even teeth. And besides, he said, I gave you my special cockteaser rate. I don’t know what you’re complaining about.
Her mouth worked convulsively. She looked for a moment as if he’d slapped her. When words did come they came in a fine spray of spit. You are trash, she said. You are scum.
Hands on knees, he was pushing erect, the girl’s dark fingers trailing out of his hair. Don’t call me trash, he said, as if it were perfectly all right to call him scum, but he was already talking to her back. She had whirled on her heels and went twisting her hips through an arched doorway into the cathedraled living room. The paperhanger looked down at the child. Her face glowed with a strange constrained glee, as if she and the paperhanger shared some secret the rest of the world hadn’t caught on to yet.
In the living room the builder was supervising the installation of a chandelier that depended from the vaulted ceiling by a long golden chain. The builder was a short bearded man dancing about, showing her the features of the chandelier, smiling obsequiously. She gave him a flat angry look. She waved a dismissive hand toward the ceiling. Whatever, she said.
She went out the front door onto the porch and down a makeshift walkway of two-by-tens into the front yard where her car was parked. The car was a silver-gray Mercedes her husband had given her for their anniversary. When she cranked the engine its idle was scarcely perceptible.
She powered down the window. Zeineb, she called. Across the razed earth of the unlandscaped yard a man in a grease-stained T-shirt was booming down the chains securing a backhoe to a low-boy hooked to a gravel truck. The sun was low in the west and bloodred behind this tableau and man and tractor looked flat and dimensionless as something decorative stamped from tin. She blew the horn. The man turned, raised an arm as if she’d signaled him.
Zeineb, she called again.
She got out of the car and started impatiently up the walkway. Behind her the gravel truck started, and truck and backhoe pulled out of the drive and down toward the road.
The paperhanger was stowing away his T-square and trowels in his wooden toolbox. Where is Zeineb? the doctor’s wife asked. She followed you out, the paperhanger told her. He glanced about, as if the girl might be hiding somewhere. There was nowhere to hide.
Where is my child? she asked the builder. The electrician climbed down from the ladder. The paperhanger came out of the bathroom with his tools. The builder was looking all around. His elfin features were touched with chagrin, as if this missing child were just something else he was going to be held accountable for.
Likely she’s hiding in a closet, the paperhanger said. Playing a trick on you.
Zeineb does not play tricks, the doctor’s wife said. Her eyes kept darting about the huge room, the shadows that lurked in corners. There was already an undercurrent of panic in her voice and all her poise and self-confidence seemed to have vanished with the child.
The paperhanger set down his toolbox and went through the house, opening and closing doors. It was a huge house and there were a lot of closets. There was no child in any of them.
The electrician was searching upstairs. The builder had gone through the French doors that opened onto the unfinished veranda and was peering into the backyard. The backyard was a maze of convoluted ditch excavated for the septic tank field line and beyond that there was just woods. She’s playing in that ditch, the builder said, going down the flagstone steps.
She wasn’t, though. She wasn’t anywhere. They searched the house and grounds. They moved with jerky haste. They kept glancing toward the woods where the day was waning first. The builder kept shaking his head. She’s got to be somewhere, he said.
Call someone, the doctor’s wife said. Call the police.
It’s a little early for the police, the builder said. She’s got to be here.
You call them anyway. I have a phone in my car. I will call my husband.
While she called, the paperhanger and the electrician continued
to search. They had looked everywhere and were forced to search places they’d already looked. If this ain’t the goddamnedest thing I ever saw, the electrician said.
The doctor’s wife got out of the Mercedes and slammed the door. Suddenly she stopped and clasped a hand to her forehead. She screamed. The man with the tractor, she cried. Somehow my child is gone with the tractor man.
Oh Jesus, the builder said. What have we got ourselves into here.
THE HIGH SHERIFF that year was a ruminative man named Bellwether. He stood beside the county cruiser talking to the paperhanger while deputies ranged the grounds. Other men were inside looking in places that had already been searched numberless times. Bellwether had been in the woods and he was picking cockleburs off his khakis and out of his socks. He was watching the woods, where dark was gathering and seeping across the field like a stain.
I’ve got to get men out here, Bellwether said. A lot of men and a lot of lights. We’re going to have to search every inch of these woods.
You’ll play hell doing it, the paperhanger said. These woods stretch all the way to Lawrence County. This is the edge of the Harrikin. Down in there’s where all those old mines used to be. Allens Creek.
I don’t give a shit if they stretch all the way to Fairbanks, Alaska, Bellwether said. They’ve got to be searched. It’ll just take a lot of men.
The raw earth yard was full of cars. Dr. Jamahl had come in a sleek black Lexus. He berated his wife. Why weren’t you watching her? he asked. Unlike his wife’s, the doctor’s speech was impeccable. She covered her face with her palms and wept. The doctor still wore his green surgeon’s smock and it was flecked with bright dots of blood as a butcher’s smock might be.
I need to feed a few cows, the paperhanger said. I’ll feed my stock pretty quick and come back and help hunt.
You don’t mind if I look in your truck, do you?
Do what?
I’ve got to cover my ass. If that little girl don’t turn up damn quick this is going to be over my head. TBI, FBI, network news. I’ve got to eliminate everything.